The present invention relates to an improved yarn feeder for circular knitting machine and particularly a yarn feeder that has a jutting strut to facilitate delivering a yarn to a knitting needle for knitting fabrics.
A lot of clothing people wearing these days is made from knitting fabrics produced by circular knitting machines. When a circular knitting machine proceeds knitting operations, there are yarn feeders feed yarns continuously to knitting needles. The knitting needles stitch or tuck the yarns to loops for forming the fabrics desired. When knitting knitted or stretch fabrics, an additional stretch yarn will be provided to go through the yarn feeder to blend with other yarns to produce the stretch or knitted fabrics (such as for making underwear). However conventional yarn feeders have a lot of problems when feeding the stretch yarn.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional yarn feeder 1 which includes a body 11 and a yarn feeding section 12 extending from a lower end of the body 11. The yarn feeding section 12 has at least one aperture 13, 13xe2x80x2 for yarns to pass through. The body 11 further has a slot 16 engaging with an adjusting element 2 for supporting a yarn roller 3. The yarn roller 3 guides the stretch yarn above the knitting needle to facilitate the knitting needle to pickup the yarn. However the yarn passing the roller tends to tremble and may cause the knitting needle missing or not completely picking the yarn. The resulting fabrics could have rough surface or voids, and have lower fabric quality.
To remedy the problems, some producers design the yarn feeding section 12 with a guide slot 17 as shown in FIG. 2. The yarn leaving the roller 3 is directed to the guide slot 17 which may eliminate yarn trembling. But the yarn tends to incur floss when sliding and scraping in the guide slot 17 for a long period of time. The floss will accumulate in the guide slot 17 and could eventually block the slot and make yarn difficult to pass through the slot, and could result in yarn broken, or the floss will be carried along the yarn and knitted in the fabric and form snarls on the fabric surface. This also will result in poor fabric quality.
The primary object of the invention is to resolve the foregoing disadvantages. The invention aims to provide an improved yarn feeder which has a jutting section located at one end of the yarn feeder. The jutting section has a yarn directing surface to allow the third yarn sliding over in a friction contact without producing floss or having the floss retained on the jutting section so that the yarn may be fed smoothly to the knitting needle without rupturing and knitting operation can be proceeded smoothly.
Another object of the invention is to provide to replace the jutting section with a strut which may be integrally formed with the yarn feeding section. The strut has a curvy yarn directing surface to allow the third yarn sliding over in a friction contact without producing floss or having the floss retained on the strut so that the yarn may be fed smoothly without rupturing.
A further object of the invention is to provide a fastening section at one end of the strut while the yarn feeding section has a fastening aperture formed at one end thereof. The fastening aperture has a fastening surface to engage with the fastening section. Or the fastening section may run through the fastening aperture and fastened by a screw nut for anchoring the strut on the yarn feeding section. The strut has the curvy yarn directing surface to allow the third yarn sliding over in a friction contact without producing floss or having the floss retained on the strut so that the yarn may be fed smoothly without rupturing.
The foregoing, as well as additional objects, features and advantages of the invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.